Helen Keller's autobiographical account , The Story of My Life, allows readers insight into what could so easily have become a world of darkness and desperation, without hope. The most important day of Helen's life was the day Anne Sullivan arrived at her home.

Helen is acutely aware of how different her life could have been without supportive parents and associations with gifted individuals who served to improve her life and offer her opportunities which she was only to glad and ready to embrace. Helen defied reason and, despite seemingly dismal prospects, was able to rise above her desperate circumstances.

One of the reasons why Helen became the person she became was because of her family life before her illness, as supported by her own words. Helen actively recounts her childhood experiences. It is because of the security she felt and the, fortunately, well-entrenched relationship with her parents - despite being struck-down so young- that she developed into a well-rounded, successful individual. Helen's parents knew their child and therefore they recognized that her behavior after the illness was symptomatic of her frustrations at her inability to now communicate as before. Helen's mother could have so easily have sent Anne Sullivan away as Anne's relationship with Helen seemed to be everything to Helen but, her dedication to the daughter she knew Helen could become and her insight into the happy child she was before, allowed her to selflessly put Helen's needs above her own.

Helen's parents went out of their way to find answers and to ease Helen's suffering at every opportunity which is why she was exposed to such amazing and life-altering individuals such as Anne Sullivan and Dr Alexander Graham Bell. Inventing a contraption (the telephone) that would be forever out of Helen's grasp reveals an irony that fortunately has a happy ending!